Just a couple of thoughts...your primary complaint seems to be with the "dryland/in the water" distinction we make between those allowed to come and those forced back. Had the boat been stopped in the water and the passengers forced back it would have been a grave injustice. It would have also been an attack on the sanctity of the family. Family unity trumps politics and I don't care if it's Castro or Bush; if you seperate family you are doing wrong. I never saw anything that suggested to me that Elian's father wasn't a loving, caring individual who wanted to be with his son. Did Castro use this boy and his father for propaganda purposes... of course he did. So did we.
The family is the primary and most fundamental unit of society. It will survive the snares of communism and the pressures of capitalism if it is allowed to remain intact. I celebrate the reunion of the Contreras family and the Gonzolez family and propagandists on both sides of this be damned.
Sugarchuck

Even me? Here I complain that Rich Lowry and NR are re-fighting the Clinton Wars, and I start up the ol' Elian debate. My bad. We'll agree to disagree, sugarchuck, but as I see it his mother gave her life to give the child some hope that he will not have in Communist Cuba, and our country betrayed him.

I was thinking of Elian during some of the Reagan coverage. Peggy Noonan had said that if Reagan were President he'd have made a stand and said "we're not sending that boy back!" Somebody else putting words in his mouth (she did do that for a living) but I could always hear him saying that. I can close my eyes now and hear those words in Reagan's voice.

Sugarchuck writes, "...propagandists on both sides of this be damned." The problem with this statement is the implied moral equivalence between the two sides. There are several principles involved here and while some are situational, others are objective. In the latter category is the principle of individual liberty. While Elian was too young to express his own individual choice, all rational people know that his chances of liberty in Cuba are nil. When he becomes 18 and applies for an exit visa who can doubt that Castro will reject the application and tell him "try again in five years."

How eager would Reno & Co. have been to "return Elian to his father" had he been, say, a Christian Scientist in Utah or Idaho who wanted his son's medical needs served by prayer instead of science, while the cousins he happily lived with at the time were, say, lesbians? Yeah, they'd send him to dad. Sure.

Thanks kindly to John Galt and brother JK for their comments. If I implied in anyway that I see a moral equivalence between Castro's Cuba and the United States, I apologize for my lack of clarity. I do see any state entity, be it Castro's regime, Reno's Washington or the Berlin Wall, that unjustly seperates the members of a family, as being reprehensible. The family is the primary social unit and it's sanctity transcends ideology and politics.
Mr. Galt's point about the Christian Scientist father and the lesbian mom goes to parental fitness. I never saw anything during the Elian ordeal that suggested his father was anything but a loving dad that wanted his son back. Frankly, if the father had drowned and the mother was left demanding the return of her son, Elian would have been on the first plane out the next morning. I applaud Mr. Galt's concern for Elian's liberty but I have to believe that the father's right to raise his son as he sees fit it also a fundamental. Unless someone can show that Elian's father was abusive or unfit in some other way I believe that a united family trumps our anti-communism.
Well folks, 'nuff said. See y'all back at the ranch.

The moral equivalence I referred to was between the "propagandists" not the nations. Saying that "the father's rights" trump Elian's liberty is the relativistic argument I was referring to.

How many families living in a totalitarian state, being unable to escape together, send one family member to freedom in the hope that one day they'll all join him or, at the very least, at least PART of their family can flourish in freedom?

To address your argument directly, in the Elian case NO state entity separated Elian from his father. His mother did. What the two state entities did do (the communist one and the supposedly free one) is separate a minor individual from his own liberty.

You also said, "the father's right to raise his son as he sees fit is also a fundamental" but a prerequisite for this is that the father lives in a free society. Cuban fathers have no right to keep their children out of the Youth Pioneers, for example. Once you are in a totalitarian state all the principles you hold so dear are very much in question.

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